26-10-2011, 04:57
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Année 1931
16 mai : Tolkien donne une conférence à la Philological Society of Oxford. Le titre de son intervention : « Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve’s Tale. » ; elle sera publiée en 1934 dans Transactions of the Philological Society. Réimpression en 2008 dans Tolkien Studies.
Dès l’introduction, Tolkien provoque l’auditeur habitué à voir en Chaucer l’un des plus grands écrivains anglais :
[citation=Tolkien Studies, vol. V, p. 109-110]« One may suspect that Chaucer, (…) would prefer the Philological Society to the Royal Society of Literature, and an editor of the English Dictionary to a poet laureate. (…) Chaucer was interested in “language”, and in the forms of his own tongue. As we gather from the envoy to Troilus and Criseyde, he [110] chose his forms and probably his spellings with care, by selection among divergencies of which he was critically aware; and he wished to have his choice handed on accurately.
Alas! if the curse he pronounced on scribe Adam produced any effect, many a fifteenth-century penman must early have gone bald. We know the detail of Chaucer’s work now only through a fifteenth-century blur (at best). His holographs, or the copies impatiently rubbed and scraped by him, would doubtless be something of a shock to us, though a shock we shall unfortunately be spared. In our unhappy case, he would be the first to applaud any efforts to undo the damage as far as possible; and the acquiring of as good a knowledge as is available of the language of his day would certainly have seemed to him a preliminary necessity, not a needless luxury. One can imagine the brief burning words, like those with which he scorched Adam, that he would address to those who profess to admire him while disdaining “philology”, who adventure, it may be, on textual criticism undeterred by ignorance of Middle English.
Of course, Chaucer was the last man himself to annotate his jests, while they were fresh. But he would recognize the need, at our distance of time, for the careful exhuming of ancient jokes buried under years, before we shape our faces to a conventional grin at his too often mentioned “humour”. Chaucer was no enemy of learning, and there is no need to apologize to him for the annotating of one of his jests, for digging it up and examining it without laughing. He will not suspect us of being incapable of laughter. From his position of advantage he will be able to observe that most philologists possess a sense of the ridiculous, one that even prevents them from taking “literary studies” too seriously. »[/citation]
[citation=Fitzgerald, p. 45]« Tolkien asserts that the Reeve’s Tale is an extended dialectal joke. Since his paper was meant for oral delivery, the idea was that all the philologists in the room could have a laugh at the expense of the literature crowd (if indeed any were present). »[/citation]
C’est que Chaucer pose problème, car au carrefour de toutes les formes d’études de la langue anglaise :
[citation=Fitzgerald, p. 51]« It is appropriate that Tolkien brought up Chaucer again and again to emphasize his thoughts about Lit. and Lang. since Chaucer’s works were commonly regarded as a dividing line, the place where philologists and medievalists were reputed to end their literary pursuits, and where modernists would not venture further into the past. »[/citation]
Mais avec une nette tendance à être annexé par le département des études littéraires :
[citation=MCE, p. 290-291]« À l’époque où [291] j’étais un examinateur jeune et enthousiaste, pour soulager mes collègues littéraires de leur fardeau (dont ils se plaignaient bruyamment), j’ai proposé de préparer le sujet d’examen sur Chaucer ou d’aider à corriger les copies. J’ai été fort surpris par la véhémence et l’hostilité avec lesquelles je fus repoussé. J’avais les mains sales : j’étais Lang.
Par bonheur, cette hostilité s’est aujourd’hui apaisée. Il arrive que l’on fraternise entre les barbelés. Mais c’est cette hostilité qui, dans la réforme du programme du début des années trente (encore en vigueur, pour l’essentiel), a rendu obligatoire la rédaction de deux compositions sur Chaucer et ses principaux contemporains. Litt refusait de laisser Lang souiller le poète de ses doigts avides ; Lang ne pouvait tolérer les copies bien minces et superficielles de Litt. »[/citation]
Toutefois :
[citation=Fitzgerald, p. 47]« Despite Tolkien’s role in the Lit. and Lang. dispute he had plenty of friends on both sides of the aisle. By 1931, he continued to work diligently with C. S. Lewis among others to remake the curriculum. »[/citation]
[citation=Duriez, p. 46]« Among other things, thery [Tolkien et Lewis] plotted in establishing a coherent undergraduate syllabus for the English School at Oxford. “Perhaps one of the most significant of [Lewis’s] contributions to the study of English literature at Oxford,” wrote Dame Helen Gardner, after his death, “was the part he played with his friend Professer J. R. R. Tolkien in establishing a syllabus for the Final Honour School which embodied his belief in the value of medieval (especially Old English) literature, his conviction that a proper study of modern literature required the linguistic training that the study of earlier literature gave, and his sense of the continuity of English literature and the syllabus, which remained in force for over twenty years, was in many ways an admirable one.” Tolkien’s reformed syllabus was accepted, in fact, by 1931, bringing together “Lang.” and “Lit.” »[/citation]
[citation=Carpenter, Inklings, p. 55; citant la lettre du 24 octobre 1931 de C.S. Lewis à son frère Warren [Collected Letters, t. II, p. 9]]« As to “English School politics”, these became less turbulent after 1931 when – chiefly thanks to Lewis’s part in the campaign – Tolkien’s syllabus reforms were accepted by the Faculty, with the result that the Anglo-saxon and Middle English parts of the course became much more attractive to undergraduates, and the study of Victorian literature was virtually abandoned. Lewis was delighted at this victory, which as he put it “my party and I have forced upon the junto after much hard fighting”. »[/citation]
Année 1931
16 mai : Tolkien donne une conférence à la Philological Society of Oxford. Le titre de son intervention : « Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve’s Tale. » ; elle sera publiée en 1934 dans Transactions of the Philological Society. Réimpression en 2008 dans Tolkien Studies.
Dès l’introduction, Tolkien provoque l’auditeur habitué à voir en Chaucer l’un des plus grands écrivains anglais :
[citation=Tolkien Studies, vol. V, p. 109-110]« One may suspect that Chaucer, (…) would prefer the Philological Society to the Royal Society of Literature, and an editor of the English Dictionary to a poet laureate. (…) Chaucer was interested in “language”, and in the forms of his own tongue. As we gather from the envoy to Troilus and Criseyde, he [110] chose his forms and probably his spellings with care, by selection among divergencies of which he was critically aware; and he wished to have his choice handed on accurately.
Alas! if the curse he pronounced on scribe Adam produced any effect, many a fifteenth-century penman must early have gone bald. We know the detail of Chaucer’s work now only through a fifteenth-century blur (at best). His holographs, or the copies impatiently rubbed and scraped by him, would doubtless be something of a shock to us, though a shock we shall unfortunately be spared. In our unhappy case, he would be the first to applaud any efforts to undo the damage as far as possible; and the acquiring of as good a knowledge as is available of the language of his day would certainly have seemed to him a preliminary necessity, not a needless luxury. One can imagine the brief burning words, like those with which he scorched Adam, that he would address to those who profess to admire him while disdaining “philology”, who adventure, it may be, on textual criticism undeterred by ignorance of Middle English.
Of course, Chaucer was the last man himself to annotate his jests, while they were fresh. But he would recognize the need, at our distance of time, for the careful exhuming of ancient jokes buried under years, before we shape our faces to a conventional grin at his too often mentioned “humour”. Chaucer was no enemy of learning, and there is no need to apologize to him for the annotating of one of his jests, for digging it up and examining it without laughing. He will not suspect us of being incapable of laughter. From his position of advantage he will be able to observe that most philologists possess a sense of the ridiculous, one that even prevents them from taking “literary studies” too seriously. »[/citation]
[citation=Fitzgerald, p. 45]« Tolkien asserts that the Reeve’s Tale is an extended dialectal joke. Since his paper was meant for oral delivery, the idea was that all the philologists in the room could have a laugh at the expense of the literature crowd (if indeed any were present). »[/citation]
C’est que Chaucer pose problème, car au carrefour de toutes les formes d’études de la langue anglaise :
[citation=Fitzgerald, p. 51]« It is appropriate that Tolkien brought up Chaucer again and again to emphasize his thoughts about Lit. and Lang. since Chaucer’s works were commonly regarded as a dividing line, the place where philologists and medievalists were reputed to end their literary pursuits, and where modernists would not venture further into the past. »[/citation]
Mais avec une nette tendance à être annexé par le département des études littéraires :
[citation=MCE, p. 290-291]« À l’époque où [291] j’étais un examinateur jeune et enthousiaste, pour soulager mes collègues littéraires de leur fardeau (dont ils se plaignaient bruyamment), j’ai proposé de préparer le sujet d’examen sur Chaucer ou d’aider à corriger les copies. J’ai été fort surpris par la véhémence et l’hostilité avec lesquelles je fus repoussé. J’avais les mains sales : j’étais Lang.
Par bonheur, cette hostilité s’est aujourd’hui apaisée. Il arrive que l’on fraternise entre les barbelés. Mais c’est cette hostilité qui, dans la réforme du programme du début des années trente (encore en vigueur, pour l’essentiel), a rendu obligatoire la rédaction de deux compositions sur Chaucer et ses principaux contemporains. Litt refusait de laisser Lang souiller le poète de ses doigts avides ; Lang ne pouvait tolérer les copies bien minces et superficielles de Litt. »[/citation]
Toutefois :
[citation=Fitzgerald, p. 47]« Despite Tolkien’s role in the Lit. and Lang. dispute he had plenty of friends on both sides of the aisle. By 1931, he continued to work diligently with C. S. Lewis among others to remake the curriculum. »[/citation]
[citation=Duriez, p. 46]« Among other things, thery [Tolkien et Lewis] plotted in establishing a coherent undergraduate syllabus for the English School at Oxford. “Perhaps one of the most significant of [Lewis’s] contributions to the study of English literature at Oxford,” wrote Dame Helen Gardner, after his death, “was the part he played with his friend Professer J. R. R. Tolkien in establishing a syllabus for the Final Honour School which embodied his belief in the value of medieval (especially Old English) literature, his conviction that a proper study of modern literature required the linguistic training that the study of earlier literature gave, and his sense of the continuity of English literature and the syllabus, which remained in force for over twenty years, was in many ways an admirable one.” Tolkien’s reformed syllabus was accepted, in fact, by 1931, bringing together “Lang.” and “Lit.” »[/citation]
[citation=Carpenter, Inklings, p. 55; citant la lettre du 24 octobre 1931 de C.S. Lewis à son frère Warren [Collected Letters, t. II, p. 9]]« As to “English School politics”, these became less turbulent after 1931 when – chiefly thanks to Lewis’s part in the campaign – Tolkien’s syllabus reforms were accepted by the Faculty, with the result that the Anglo-saxon and Middle English parts of the course became much more attractive to undergraduates, and the study of Victorian literature was virtually abandoned. Lewis was delighted at this victory, which as he put it “my party and I have forced upon the junto after much hard fighting”. »[/citation]